Birth: A Novella Read online

  It was her first time, and when she cried with the pain, Dominic said he was sorry, and he cried too. He held the child in his arms, and soon their tears dried, and she asked him could they try it again, and he did. In the morning, after he showed her some of the other things men and women can do together, he gave her one of my old dresses—the blue work dress that Madame Leslie had made for me when I was at La Sapienza—and said she mustn’t wear it here, but only at her own home.

  Berend, who had moped through the festival, dancing mostly with his wife as if at a conventional function, perked up at Dominic’s surprising choice. Dominic’s stable boy was sitting in a corner, looking as bereft as only the very young can, and when Berend smiled and offered his hand his answering smile lit up his whole face, making him almost handsome.

  The next morning I sent the note to Lord Roger Zichmni, inviting him and Tariq to stay at Aranyi. I used my own stationery, that Dominic had said I must have, with my name embossed at the top below the Aranyi cipher, a stylized A surrounded by a Greek meander design. “We have little to offer,” I wrote, “except the pleasure of an informal, intimate gathering after the festival madness, and with no pressure of affairs of state. Forgive the short notice, but take it as an act of friendship.”

  There was only a slight chance they’d be free to accept, and less chance that they would, but it was worth a shot. Berend showed me how to write it, worrying about the propriety even as he spelled out words and guided my pen. “It should come from Margrave Aranyi, under his seal, and with less familiarity in the phrasing.”

  “Then they’ll turn it down,” I said. I was certain of that much, that Roger would throw a proper, obsequious note from Dominic on the fire, disdaining to reply. “This way, they at least owe it to a poor pregnant wife to make up an excuse.”

  ***

  When Dominic and I wake again, it is another day after the birth. We’re still lying on the soiled, blood-soaked sheets, and the smell is truly stomach-turning. It seems nobody in the house has the strength or the courage to lift and move master and mistress from the bed and change the linen. It’s like sleeping inside a rotting corpse, the way some insects live. I’ve become a maggot, I think.

  The child is screaming, really shrieking in my ear. That’s what woke me up. Of the three of us, she’s the only one wearing a diaper, but we’ve all soiled ourselves. It certainly adds to the ambience. I’ve never been so filthy in my life.

  Dominic sniffs and turns his head. Which of the hells of Erebos is this? he asks in communion. The one for wife-beaters or the one for unfaithful spouses?

  I’m in it, too, I say. It must be the one for new parents.

  No, Dominic says, I’ve been there. That one’s much worse.

  I open my eyes. There’s a crowd of people in here: Magali, Roger, Tariq, maids, Dominic’s stable boy and a few others. I nudge Dominic with my elbow. We have an audience, I say.

  Dominic opens his eyes wide and scans the crowd, lifting his head. “Isis and Astarte be praised,” he says, his tired voice straining into a hoarse baritone. “With the help of my overlord and my son, my lady wife has been safely delivered of our daughter.” He nods at Roger and Tariq, encouraging the crowd to offer their thanks.

  People have covered nose and mouth against the stench, but at Dominic’s formal speech they lower their hands and echo, “Isis and Astarte be praised.” It’s my introduction to the pagan religion whose deities will become familiar in time and whose rites will punctuate my life. I think of the tapestries on my bedroom wall, the fleshy, majestic goddesses who watch over childbirth and motherhood. It was not they who saved me, but Dominic. And it was Roger and Tariq who brought Dominic back from the death he incurred for my sake. Piety does not come easily to my atheistic mind, but I’m willing to follow the outward forms if it pleases Dominic.

  That’s all it requires, he says. You and I may know the truth, but it gives people hope, personifying the anonymous forces of nature. And it costs us little.

  Naomi the witch comes forward from the back of the crowd to stand on Dominic’s side of the bed. “Margrave,” she says, ignoring me, “you did well. Forgive my absence.” She seems almost humble, genuinely disconcerted, perhaps at not having foreseen that I would return to Aranyi for the birth. She grins at the screaming child. “There’s no doubt she’s yours, my lord.”

  Dominic raises an eyebrow. “Was there ever any doubt?”

  Naomi shakes her head. “No.” She’s holding something back in my presence, but I can sense it—regret, that the child is mine, not hers, that Dominic’s wife has survived. The witch knows I’m on to her, is unapologetic with me. I would have helped you, she says privately. I would not harm anyone dear to Lord Dominic. Truly, Lady Amalie, I did not know you had returned.

  It’s clear to me where we stand. She could not, or would not, act directly against me. But neglect, omission, oversight—these are within her range. She had gone to her home well before there was any chance of knowing whether I had come back to Aranyi, something even Magali had suspected might happen. In a way the child is my protection. A mother is more sacred here than a wife.

  Amalie, Dominic says, breaking in on my thoughts, remember who you are. ‘Gravina Aranyi does not cower before anyone’s opinions.

  It’s what he’s been trying to tell me, here and at the Ormondes’, and why he couldn’t accept my explanation for choosing death. He thinks I’m tougher than I am, or wants me to become so. If I yell at him so boldly, how can I shrink so timidly before his wrath? We must be two of a kind, a matched pair, quick to anger, fierce and loud as mating cats, and neither one dominant. It is the same in my relations with others. I should not be deliberately discourteous, but have confidence in my own motives. Having a tray of supper in my bedroom because I’m tired is my prerogative. But requesting it only because I’m afraid to sit with Lady Ormonde and encounter her dislike or jealousy—that is unworthy of my position. Even a witch, it seems, may only think against me, not act.

  Magali’s son Wilmos is in here, too, a foolish smile on his face, eyes only for the witch who stands, tall and proud, looking with envy at the child. He steps closer to her and it’s impossible to avoid his thoughts. Young man-boy, his first time with a woman, snowed in with Naomi in her mother’s snug little cottage. He had not wanted to come back, had hoped to be trapped for weeks by the storm, living on the stored provisions and the small game the two women caught, seemingly with their bare hands. Only his basic decency, knowing the lives that were at stake, had forced him to return on his errand, bringing Naomi to Aranyi. He can’t help the direction of his thoughts in this room of birth, that he could give Naomi a child, if she would allow it—

  She turns her hard green eyes on him, shaking her head. He seems to shrivel where he stands until she takes pity on him. “Don’t you see?” she asks. “What we had was like Midwinter night for us. We cannot be together all the year. We both serve Aranyi first. You will find a wife when you are ready, and mother for your children.”

  He knows not to protest that he doesn’t want a wife, wants only the wild passion, the ferocity of the sorceress. He nods, and acquiesces, and decides that he is lucky after all, to have had the two days and the night.

  Magali cuffs her son affectionately. “Send a boy to do a man’s errand,” she says, “and a man comes back instead of the boy.” She’s so thankful to have him safe, and at the same time awed and intimidated by everything that’s happened in the past two days, that she can’t hug him the way she wants to, can only treat him like the adult he is so much nearer to being than when he left.

  Despite the stench, I’m increasingly aware of only one need: I’m ravenous, as I will always be so long as my gift is strong. And I can’t believe it, that I’m lying here all this time in filth, with everybody just standing around chatting, like a cocktail party for larvae.

  It’s traditional for the household to view the master’s child as soon as possible, Dominic explains, smiling at my simile. But you’re right, it
’s time we were alone, and clean.

  It is Naomi who sees to it, muttering against the way things have been left, snapping her fingers and sending the men out, maids running to and fro, refilling our empty water pitcher. Even Magali scurries downstairs to get the cooks working on food for us. One woman stays—Isobel, Sir Karl Ormonde’s partner of Midsummer night, the nursemaid hired by Magali. She seems unaffected by the foulness, coming forward at Naomi’s direction to take the child from my arms. “I’ll just wash her, my lady,” she says soothingly at my anxious look, my clutching hands that refuse to relinquish my baby. “I’ll clean her up and put a fresh diaper on her while you and Margrave Aranyi bathe.”

  Naomi alone helps Dominic out of the bed and onto his feet, removing her own clothes to keep them from being soiled. I watch, expecting the androgynous being to reveal itself. But no, she’s completely and only female in form, tall and with absurdly narrow hips, but with breasts and vagina and nothing more.

  Dominic leans all his weight on her and she doesn’t stagger as she helps him into his bathroom. Then it’s my turn. The witch’s arms, hard and muscular as any man’s, lift me as easily as Isobel lifted the baby. A moment of communion begins, one naked body carrying another, and I perceive a being whose gift is an extension of its vitality, inseparable. The force of my own gift, that always threatens to overwhelm my lesser physical strength, makes the witch stumble over the threshold of my bathroom. Her arms tighten around me; she stares at me, into me, but the connection breaks, the budding insight withers, as Naomi settles me in the bathtub and Katrina takes over.

  My maid, having left husband and farm only after hearing the news of the birth, is almost helpless through her tears. When she sees how weak I am she focuses, and in a short time I’m clean and wearing a nightgown, lying in my own bed in the ‘Gravina’s bedroom with Dominic and the baby beside me. We will stay here for the next few days while an army of scrubwomen and laundresses makes the Margrave’s bedroom inhabitable by something other than hyenas and vultures and dung beetles.

  Oh, the witch says, breaking in on my thoughts, you’d think you’d never smelled your own waste before. It’s the sure way to heal from mortal wounds, to sleep undisturbed for a night and a day.

  To be fair, her medical advice has always been as reliable as any Terran doctor’s, and far more practical.

  ***

  Late in the morning after Midwinter night, after I had written my invitation to Lord Roger and Tariq, Dominic gave me his gift. It was wrapped in a piece of silk, and I could tell what it was by the shape and the weight, something I had handled many times at Aranyi. A book. I opened it, unfolding the layers of silk like uncovering a prism or a jewel, revealing the leather binding. The title is stamped in gold on the front and on the spine. The Last of the Wine, it says. By Mary Renault.

  It is a Terran novel, centuries old like all of them. Terrans lost the attention span for novels when they took up screens: movies, then television, computers, and finally holograms, except for addicts like me who want to dive into a deep ocean of narrative, to be submerged in a story, to resurface only under protest. The texts still exist, preserved in the digital archives—War and Peace, Persuasion, Tom Jones, along with lighter, more ephemeral stuff—all accessible if you know what you’re looking for. If you don’t—

  “How did you get it?” I asked in awe.

  Dominic smirked, embarrassed. “I got someone in that dreary place you used to work to ‘load it down.’ Then I found a printing house that could convert from electronic form to paper, and compensated them for the single run and the binding.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I wanted to see what you liked so much.” He paid me the compliment of criticizing the story, to show that he had given it real attention, thought about it. “But I didn’t understand: why did Lysis have to give up his companion when he married? And I certainly hope,” he added, attempting to look severe, “that should I die, you’ll wait a decent interval before marrying Stefan.”

  He had referred to Stefan as if they were still lovers. In his mind, I think, they were. Everything that had driven us apart in the city had become increasingly unreal here at Aranyi.

  “You saved us all,” he said, knowing my thoughts. “When you asked to go home.”

  I was gratified to discover that he had felt it too, the need to get away from the toxic environment of the city and ‘Graven Fortress—

  “No,” he said, “when you said it. When you said ‘home.’ At first I misunderstood.”

  I remembered that morning at breakfast. His face had shown it all. He had thought I had meant to leave him forever, go back to the Terran Sector or even, the gods help me, Terra. And then, when he realized I meant Aranyi—

  Then I knew, he said, kissing me and starting the true communion at last, I knew I had not lost everything, as I had feared.

  CHAPTER 5: Family Reunion

  A week later I stand in the great hall, holding my daughter on her naming day. Dominic sits in a large chair beside me. I should be seated, he should stand to present his child to the world, but it takes more than a week to come back from death, even for Dominic. His beautiful voice has returned, deep and musical, and when he proclaims that his wife has given birth to his “trueborn daughter, Jana-Eleonora Herzog-Aranyi,” everybody hears and applauds, shouting good wishes. I walk through the hall, showing Jana off, accepting the congratulations of our tenants and neighbors.

  As Naomi has already remarked, it doesn’t require this ceremony to prove that Jana is Dominic’s daughter. Apart from her baby-blue eyes, her face is like Dominic’s in every other feature. I wonder if there is any part of me in her. She cries, loud and demanding; I open my dress, feel her soft lips suckling at my breast, and I know her as mine. Her gift is not active yet; she might, possibly, not have inherited a gift at all, despite the inner eyelids. But my gift allows a kind of communion with her, an awareness of who she is, an individual, more than just the product of her father’s and my love for each other, wonderful as that is. Like Dominic she is imperious, brave and honorable, but there is enough of my sharpness and willfulness in her for us to form an organic, unbreakable connection.

  I walk back to stand beside Dominic, who reaches up for his daughter. Jana nestles happily in her father’s arms; she has known her papa from the beginning, just as surely as she knows her mama’s touch and voice. Roger and Tariq join us to take their leave. They look down at Dominic and an emotion passes among the three of them. The constraint that has been with us at the beginning of my labor is gone, removed forever by our shared ordeal.

  “You have a beautiful daughter,” Roger says. “I envy you.”

  Dominic looks up at Roger and smiles. I have to turn away in confusion; for a moment my husband looks exactly like the young man who brought me back from death, breaking my fall off the last ledge of life. “You have your own, my lord, just as beautiful.” Dominic lies dutifully, giving the required if unbelievable reply from a new father. “I hope I may be godparent to the next.”

  “I would be honored, Dominic,” Roger says. “And it is Roger to you. Just Roger.”

  Tariq touches the baby’s thick dark hair. “She’s very like you, Father,” he says. I have never heard him call Dominic anything other than “sir” or “my lord.”

  Dominic reaches for Tariq’s hand, responding as much to what is unsaid. He looks into his adopted son’s eyes, saying simply, “Thank you, son,” holding the look and the hand longer than necessary, but for once Tariq doesn’t resist. They smile into each other’s eyes with something approaching respect.

  Dominic breaks the spell first. “Look after him,” he says, nodding in Roger’s direction.

  “I will, sir,” Tariq says, the word now merely the customary, affectionate address of son to father.

  As Roger and Tariq walk toward the door I trail after them, not wanting Dominic to hear me. If what I say or do is improper, it will be between me and these two young men, no
one else. “Thank you both for my husband’s life,” I say. “I can never hope to repay you, but I swear that Aranyi is yours, Margrave Aranyi and I are at your service for as long as we live or can be of use.”

  Roger shakes his head. As Dominic could have predicted, he’s uneasy talking to a woman about matters of life and death, debts of honor. “There is nothing to repay,” he says in his light but resonant voice. “No honorable man could stand back, see someone give up his life for the mother of his child, and do nothing. I value Aranyi’s alliance, but I prefer that you grant it freely, out of sharing my vision of what Eclipsis’s future should be, not out of a sense of obligation.”

  I find myself thinking, not of Roger’s measured, politic words, but of him and Dominic, during their match in the tournament, and here at Aranyi, in the barn. My foolish, wifely stratagem had been in some way an attempt to equalize things between them, to give Dominic a victory over this young man he had desired for so long, and to make up for the humiliation I had inflicted on him with my impulsive act of “protection” at the tournament. All I have accomplished is another defeat, putting Dominic forever in the debt of his overlord.

  Childbirth has disordered my shielding abilities, and Tariq is glaring at me. He’s the more gifted of the two young men; my every nuance of thought is open to him if he cares. And he cares very much about Roger. He is not only companion to Roger, but a royal bodyguard, sworn to defend the Viceroy unto death. Any danger to his lord, of weapon, word or thought, is for him to deflect. If Dominic is in some way still a threat to Roger, and if I am in league with my husband, he will not relax his vigilance on account of my sex or recent motherhood.